Hackjob

It's been a hell of a past month and things have finally settled down enough with the move for me to catch up on the sizable backlog of posts I've accumulated. So here's one of them. I mentioned in my last post about the 6,1 Mac Pro that I was going to be travelling with it - and I did. I spent two months with the machine trying to get it to do things it was never meant for. It went about as well as you'd expect.

Everyone knows the vacuum cleaner company Dyson, right? A few years ago they actually made an unexpected foray into high-end audio - except they did it in a way that was so ridiculously on brand, it had zero chance of catching on. Dubbed the Zone, this goofy device was widely ridiculed, but it did have some high points. Now that they're steeply discounted, are they worth another look?

Not too long ago, I settled on Microsoft's old Trackball Explorer as trackball nirvana. Unfortunately, it's been out of production for well over a decade and the MTE's closest modern equivalents don't really hit all the same notes... except for one. Enter the Sanwa Gravi, a trackball you've almost definitely been sleeping on.

I'm in the process of moving and anticipating being without my main setup for the next two months. Since I'm packing light in terms of hardware, I decided to go shopping for a very portable - but not totally dreadful keyboard. Needless to say, I went a little more overboard than I thought I would.

Well I did say I was going to get another Mac Pro and lo and behold - here it is. I can also say with certainty that a fair number of you reading this are rolling your eyes at the mere sight of this thing. This of course, is the infamous Mac Pro 6,1 - widely regarded as one of the worst redesigns that Apple ever released - and I'm going to tear it apart.

"Help me, or I'll steal your Greenies." Just a short plug for something I feel very strongly about - consumer protection. We live in a increasingly consumer hostile age where it feels like us consumers have less and less control over the products we buy and the services we use. Apart from the rare content creator that isn't shilling for VPNs or pube trimmers, where do you turn to when you just want straightforward information about whether or not a company - no matter how niche - is going to screw you by opting into their terms of service?